Kenneth
Neil Cukier covers technology and telecoms for The Economist in
London. Earlier, his work focused on the international politics of
technology, particularly intellectual property and Internet
governance. Previously, he was the technology editor of The Asian
Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong and a regular commentator on CNBC
Asia; before that he was the European Editor of Red Herring. From
1992 to 1996 he worked at The International Herald Tribune in Paris.
From 2002 to 2004 Mr. Cukier was a research fellow at the National
Center for Digital Government at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government, where he worked on a book about the Internet
and international relations. His work has also appeared in The New
York Times, The Washington Post, Prospect, The Financial Times and
Foreign Affairs, among others. He has been a frequent commentator on
business and technology matters for CBS, CNN, NPR and the BBC and
others. Mr. Cukier is a term-member at the Council on Foreign
Relations. Additionally, he serves on the board of advisors to the
Daniel Pearl Foundation.

Panelists

Karen
Banks is a networking pioneer who has worked with ICTs and their
application as a tool for social change since 1990. She coordinated
the Association For Progressive Communications’ (APC) participation
in the WSIS process and has been active in facilitation of the Civil
Society content and themes group and an active member of the Human
Rights, Information Security, Gender and European caucuses and
working groups. She leads APC’s work in the CRIS (Communication
Rights in the Information Society) campaign and has currently holds
the position of Networking and Advocacy Coordinator for APC after
coordinating APC's Women's Networking Support Programme for 8 years.
She is a Director of GreenNet (the APC Member in the UK) and trustee
of Privacy International, an international privacy rights and civil
liberties watchdog based in the UK.

Phillip Bond is the President and CEO of the Information Technology Association of America. Phil also served as Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce for Technology from 2001 to 2005, and he served as Chief of Staff to Commerce Secretary Donald Evans from 2002 to 2003. As Under Secretary, Phil oversaw the operations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Office of Technology Policy, and the National Technical Information Service. He served as Director of Federal Public Policy at Hewlett-Packard Company in 2001 and, between 1998 and 2001, was Senior Vice President for Government Affairs and Treasurer of the Information Technology Industry Council. From 1993 to 1998, he was Chief of Staff to Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn (R-WA) and, from 1992-1993, was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, guiding legislative affairs for then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Phil is a 1978 cum laude graduate of Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon.

Bertrand
de la Chappelle is the Special Envoy for the Information Society
of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, in charge of Internet
Governance and follow-up processes to WSIS. A career diplomat
with an engineering background and entrepreneurial experience,
Bertrand de La Chapelle has specialized in multi-stakeholder
mechanisms and the use of information technologies to facilitate
them. He was in particular the Director of wsis-online.net,
a Geneva-based association promoting multi-stakeholder interaction
among WSIS participants, particularly through a web community
platform. As Head of the Mission for New Information Technologies in
the French Foreign Ministry from 1998 to 2001, he was a member of the
G8 Digital Opportunities Task force (DOT Force). He later conducted
in 2001-2002 a personal research on global governance issues and
mechanisms, as special advisor to the Director of IFRI, the leading
French Think Tank on International Relations. His
business experience includes being co-founder and President (from
1994 to 1998) of VIRTOOLS, the leading provider of development tools
for the videogames and interactive 3D markets and Creator and
Director of the Consulting Division of Innovation 128, a major French
technology monitoring firm (1990-1994). Previous
assignment include advisor in the cabinet of the Minister of European
Affairs.

Yin
Chen, is the Director General in the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Ministry of Information Industry of China.

Pierre
Dandjinou is currently a Regional Policy Advisor on ICT for
Development at SURF/UNDP,Africa. Previously, served as Director of
Infocom Services, a consultancy firm operating from Cotonou, Benin
and Libreville, Gabon, then as a Programme Officer for UNDP
(1997-2000); in this position, he coordinated the Africa node of the
Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP). Pierre is
involved with many IT related initiatives on the continent, and is a
member of various Advisory Committees including Afrinic , the African
Internet Registry, the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) of ICANN,
and the Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI). Pierre is Chairman
of AfriNIC and President of the Benin ISOC Chapter. Pierre’s
current specific areas of interest are e-strategies, e-governance and
e-Parliaments as means for fostering use of ICTs for human
development in the Africa region.

David
Gross has served since August 2001 as the U.S. Coordinator for
International Communications and Information Policy in the Bureau of
Economic and Business Affairs of the US Department of State. Since
joining the Department, Ambassador Gross has addressed the United
Nations (UN) General Assembly and has led U.S. delegations to many
major international telecommunications conferences, including the
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) 2002 Plenipotentiary in
Marrakech, Morocco, the ITU's 2002 World Telecommunication
Development Conference in Istanbul, the ITU's 2004 World
Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Brazil, and two APEC
Tel Ministerials, in Shanghai, China and Lima, Peru. He also has led
the U.S. Government's participation in the multilateral preparatory
work for both phases of the UN's "Heads of State" World
Summit on the Information Society, and had the honor of leading the
U.S. delegations to both the formal Summit in Geneva in 2003 and in
Tunis 2005. Ambassador Gross has been a member of the UN Information
and Communications Technologies Task Force. Ambassador Gross has had
the honor to lecture at many colleges and universities around the
world, including in the United States, Qatar, the UAE, Yemen,
Thailand, India, Bangladesh and France.

Hideo
Shimizu is the Vice-Minister of Internal Affairs and
Communications of Japan.

Juan
Carlos Solines Moreno, is the Head of ICT and Telecoms Regulatory
Authority of Ecuador. He is also the Executive Director of the
research and consulting firm Gobierno Digital, a lawyer and holder of
a Masters in Public Administration program from the Kennedy School at
Harvard University. He served for three years as the Personal
Assistant to the Ecuadorian President Sixto Duran-Ballen and later as
Undersecretary General for Public Administration (Deputy Chief of
Staff). He works as a Partner for the Law Firm Asociados Solines
(JASOL) in Quito and he currently teaches Law and New Technologies,
Intellectual Property and e-Commerce Seminar at Universidad San
Francisco de Quito. He is also the founder and President of the
NGO's "Tecnologia Estado y Sociedad" and "Red
Tecnologica Latinoamericana", two non-governmental organizations
created to analyze legal and policy issues relating to computer based
information exchange, and the impact and influence of ICT in
government, private sector and society at-large, respectively. He
represented his country at the e-Commerce Experts Committee of the
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), and at the World Summit
of Information Society (WSIS) and Preparatory Process. He was also a
member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)

David
Souter has been managing director of ICT Development Associates
ltd and visiting professor in communications management at the
University of Strathclyde, Scotland, since 2003. He works mainly at
the interface of ICT and development policy with a variety of
international and civil society organisations and the private sector.
He was coordinator of the Louder Voices project which assessed
developing country participation in international ICT decision-making
for the DOT Force in 2002, and is currently reviewing developing
country and civil society participation in WSIS for APC. From 1995 to
2003, he was chief executive of the Commonwealth Telecommunications
Organisation.

Lynn
St.Amour is President/CEO of the Internet Society (ISOC). She
joined ISOC in 1998 as Executive Director of its Europe, Middle East,
and Africa (EMEA) division, and has been responsible for ISOC's
international expansion. She became ISOC's global Executive Director
and COO in 1999 and held that position until her appointment as
President and CEO in March of 2001. Her background includes positions
at the highest levels in international sales and marketing, strategic
planning, partner management and manufacturing. She also has
considerable experience in corporate restructuring and start-up
management. St.Amour has spent most of her career working in the
United Kingdom, France and Switzerland, with significant long-term
assignments in other European countries.

Mohamed
Sharil Tarmizi is the Senior Advisor in the Office of the
Chairman, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission
(MCMC).Prior to assuming his current position in March 2003, he was
responsible for leading new development initiatives such as licensing
migration to a convergence framework, 3G mobile systems, broadband
initiatives, capacity building programmes on bridging the digital
divide and self regulation in the communications and multimedia
sector within the MCMC. Amongst the organisations that he has
collaborated with are the International Telecoms Union (ITU), the
Commonwealth Telecoms Organisation (CTO), the Asia Pacific
Telecommunity (APT) and the Pacific Telecoms Council (PTC). Sharil
also works closely with other international organizations in the
Internet field such as ICANN where he is currently the Chairman of
the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) in ICANN and a member of
ICANN’s Board of Directors. Sharil has been involved in the ICANN
process issues relating to Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs)
where he was involved in the early development of identifying
problems in the deployment of IDNs.

Paul
Twomey became President/CEO of ICANN on 27 March 2003.
Before joining ICANN, he was the founder of Argo
[email protected],
a high-level international advisory and investment firm that assists
both Fortune 500 companies and start-up companies to build global
Internet and technology businesses and strategic alliances. Prior to
that, Dr. Twomey was founding Chief Executive Officer of the National
Office for the Information Economy (NOIE), and the Australian federal government's Special Adviser for
the Information Economy and Technology. From 1999 to 2001 Twomey
chaired ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Dr. Twomey
was also Executive General Manager, Europe, of Austrade –
the Australian Trade Commission.
As the leader of Austrade's Global Information Technology and
Telecommunications Network, he assisted Australia's IT&T firms to
market their products and services to key European, American and
Asian markets. Widely published in academic and popular journals, Dr.
Twomey has contributed to books on industry policy, foreign and
defence policy, and development issues. He holds a Bachelor of Arts
(First Class Honors) from the University
of Queensland,
a Master of Arts (Political Science and International Relations) fromPennsylvania
State University and a PhD in International Relations from the University
of Cambridge.